A large number of Cambridge students and staff have been caught up in the travel disruption caused by the cloud of volcanic ash floating over Europe.

The grounding of flights has left students marooned in cities as far away as Helsinki, Istanbul and Prague, with no easy options for getting back to Cambridge. Sixty students from Homerton College have so far been unable to return, and nineteen students from Downing are still stranded.

Many students have risen to the challenge of the disruption, devising sophisticated plans to return to Cambridge without the use of aeroplanes. One student who was trapped in Northern Ireland is reported to have taken a ferry before hitching a cross-land ride to Glasgow with the Rangers F. C. fans’ bus, before heading south on a train.

A student at Murray Edwards College, stuck in Hamburg, scoured the entire Channel coastline, from Esbjerg to Le Havre, in search of an available berth on a cross-channel ferry.

For a group of St Catharine’s students, the ordeal of returning to Cambridge from Istanbul lasted for four days, and involved a frantic trip across Europe which included detours to Basel and Brussels. The group spent £400 each on their convoluted journey back, which more than doubled the cost of their short break in Turkey.

The University’s Erasmus exchange students, many of whom spent the Easter vacation at home with their families, have been particularly affected by the air traffic ban. Paula Zumalacárregui Martínez, who normally studies in Madrid, was due to fly back on Monday, but will now be unable to travel until the 26th of April at the earliest. “I’m not going to be back in time [for the start of term],” said Miss Zumalacárregui, “but there’s nothing I can do about it.”

Other students have accepted the inconvenience with similar stoicism, and attempted to make the most of the situation by studying at home, sampling the university facilities available in other countries. Olesya Kryshevich, a linguistics student from Austria, gave up on her flight and joined the queue to get into the university library in Vienna. “It’s only been open for ten minutes, and all the desks are occupied already. I’m ninth on the waiting list. I’ll never complain about the UL again.”

Academic staff have also been affected by the ash cloud. Four lecturers from the Department of German who were attending a workshop on Weimar at the University of California, Berkeley, have been unable to return. Other academics are enjoying unexpectedly lengthy sojourns in such distant locations as Hyderabad, Dubai, Hong Kong, and Australia.

The disruption has affected the staff of Downing College particularly acutely: nine of its fellows are still stuck overseas.

Because of a lack of examiners and students, the Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages has been forced to postpone oral examinations which were due to take place on Monday and Tuesday. Students have been advised by University authorities that they will not be penalised for missing examinations and deadlines due to transport delays.

The ash cloud was created by the eruption of a volcano under the Eyjafjallajökull glacier in Iceland. Geologists are unable to predict how long the volcano, which was thought to be in a dormant state, will continue to send ash into the atmosphere.

The fact that the volcano’s last eruption lasted for two years, from 1821 to 1823, is unlikely to provide much comfort to stranded students and staff, who have little option but to wait for the skies to clear.

As one of the Department of German’s lecturers trapped in Berkeley put it, “we have to follow Schopenhauer's advice: do what you can and suffer what you must”.